FRANKLIN. Franklin commenced the study of the languages at twenty-seven years of age. We quote his account of the manner in which he pursued this branch of his studies: A FEMALE LINGUIST. Maria Cajetana Agnesi, an Italian lady of great learning, was born at Milan, March 16, 1718. Her inclinations, from her earliest youth, led her to the study of science, and at "I had begun," says he, "in 1733 an age when young persons of her to study languages. I soon made sex attend only to frivolous purmyself so much a master of the suits, she made such astonishing French as to be able to read the progress in mathematics, that when, books in that language with ease. in 1750, her father, professor in the I then undertook the Italian. An University of Bologna, was unable acquaintance, who was also learning to continue his lectures, from infirm it, used often to tempt me to play health, she obtained permission from chess with him. Finding this took the Pope, Benedict XIV., to fill his up too much of the time I had to chair. Before this, at the early age spare for study, I at length refused of nineteen, she had supported one to play any more, unless on this hundred and ninety-one theses, condition—that the victor in every which were published in 1738, ungame should have a right to impose der the title of Propositiones Philoa task, either of parts of the gram-sophica. She was mistress of Lamar to be got by heart, or in trans- tin, Greek, Hebrew, French, Gerlations, &c., which task the van- man, and Spanish. At length she quished was to perform upon hon- gave up her studies, and went into our before our next meeting. As the monastery of the Blue Nuns, at we played pretty equally, we thus Milan, where she died, January 9, beat one another into that lan- 1799. In 1740, she published a disguage. I afterwards, with a little course, tending to prove " that the painstaking, acquired as much of study of the liberal arts is not inthe Spanish as to read their books compatible with the understandings also. I have already mentioned of woman." This was written when that I had had only one year's in- she was very young; she wrote struction in a Latin school, and that upon mathematics of a high order when very young, after which I ne--fluxions and analytics. The comglected that language entirely. But mentators of Newton were acquaintwhen I had attained an acquainted with her mathematical works ance with the French, Italian, and Spanish, I was surprised to find, on looking over a Latin Testament, that I understood more of that language than I had imagined, which encouraged me to apply myself to the study of it again; and I met with more success, as those preceding languages had greatly smoothed my way." while they were in manuscript. In 1801, these works were published in two volumes, at the expense of Mr. Baron Maseres, to do honour to her memory, and to prove that women have minds capable of comprehending the most abstruse studies. Her eulogy was pronounced by Frisi, and translated into French by Boulard. PIRACY IN THE PULPIT. DR. SOUTH. Webster, in his "great india-rubber speech" at Trenton, related the following anecdote: "May it please your honours-I remember having heard an anecdote of a celebrated divine, Dr. South, a man of great learning and virtue. He relieved PLEASURES AND TOILS OF LITERATURE. 129 himself of his clerical duties one | bour. 'Oh, no,' said the rector, summer by travelling incog. He we turn off these things rapidly. went into a country church in the On Friday afternoon and Saturday north of England one Sabbath morn- morning I produced this discourse.' ing, and heard the rector read a ser- 'Is that possible, sir,' said Dr. South, mon. In coming from the church, 'it took me three weeks to write the rector suspected him to be a that very sermon.' 'Your name is brother of the ministry, and spoke not Dr. South?' said the rector. 'It to him. He received the rector's is, sir,' said Dr. South. Then,' courtesies, and thanked him for the said the rector, I have only to very edifying sermon he had preach- say that I am not ashamed to ed, suggesting that it must have preach Dr. South's sermons anybeen the result of a good deal of la- where.”” PLEASURES AND TOILS OF LITERATURE. Literature has its solitary plea- and silent communings of their sures, and they are many; it has muse. Says an anonymous writer: also its social pleasures, and they "The morning has been specially are more. The Persian poet, Sadi, consecrated to study by the examteaches a moral in one of his apo-ple of the Christian scholar. Haclogues. Two friends passed a sum-kett calls it, very prettily, and in mer day in a garden of roses; one the spirit of Cowley or Carew, 'the satisfied himself with admiring their colours and inhaling their fragrance; the other filled his bosom with the leaves, and enjoyed at home, during several days, with his family, the deliciousness of the perfume. The first was the solitary, the second the social student. He wanders among many gardens of thought, but always brings back some flower in his hand. Who can estimate the advantages that may result from this toil, and this application of it! The domestic history of the amiable Cowper, notwithstanding his abiding melancholy, presents us with some placid and even glowing pictures-when contemplated seated on his sofa, rehearsing each newly constructed passage to his faithful Mary Unwin. In their method of economizing time, we find a certain uniformity in the practice of authors and students, of gathering up their spare minutes. Some writers yielding to their pleasing toils over the midnight lamp; others, again, devoting the early dawn of day to the sweet mother of honey dews and pearls which drop upon the paper from the student's pen.' The learned and excellent Bishop Jewell affords a very delightful specimen of the day of an English scholar, who not only lived among his books but among men. He commonly rose at four o'clock, had private prayers at five, and attended the public service of the church in the cathedral at six. The remainder of the morning was given to study. One of his biographers has drawn a very interesting sketch of Jewell during the day. "At meals, a chapter being first read, he recreated himself with scholastic wars between young scholars whom he entertained at his table. After meals, his doors and ears were open to all suits and causes; at these times, for the most part, he despatched all those businesses which either his place, or others' importunity forced upon him, making gain of the residue of this time for study. About the hour of nine at night he called his servants to an account of how they had spent the day, and admonished them accordingly. From this examination to his study, (how long it is uncertain, oftentimes after midnight) and so to bed; wherein, after some part of an author read to him by the gentlemen of his bed-chamber, commending himself to the protection of his Saviour, he took his rest." So it was with Fielding, Goldsmith, Steele, and many others, honourable in literature; so also with Handel, Mozart, and Weber, in music; and it is one of the kindly recompenses of nature, by which she contrives to adjust, so equitably, the good and evil in this life. We owe that magnificent oratorio, the "Messiah," and others of his masterly productions to the author's most adverse circumstances; and it is doubted whether men of genius generally would have achieved half as much as they have, had their circumstances in life been more propitious. Sir Walter Scott wrote his Waverley, however, for love—not of pelf, but his pen. Not so his subsequent romances. Beaumont was of opinion that a man of genius could no more help putting his thoughts on paper than a traveller in a burning desert can help drinking when he sees water. POETICAL HEROINES. BYRON'S "MAID OF ATHENS." "Maid of Athens, ere we part, Give, O give me back my heart." The Maid of Athens, in the very teeth of poetry, has become Mrs. Black, of Egina! The beautiful Teresa Makri, of whom Byron asked back his heart, of whom Moore and Hobhouse, and the poet himself, have written so much and so passionately, has forgotten the sweet burden of the sweetest of love-songs, and taken the unromantic name, and followed the unromantic fortunes, of a Scotchman! The commodore proposed that we should call upon her on our way to the temple of Jupiter, this morning. We pulled up to the town in the barge, and landed on the handsome pier built by Dr. Howe (who expended thus, most judiciously, a part of the provisions sent from our country in his charge), and, finding a Greek in the crowd who understood a little Italian, we were soon on our way to Mrs. Black's. Our guide was a fine, grave-looking man of forty, with a small cockade on his red cap, which indicated that he was some way in the service of the government. He laid his hand on his heart when I asked him if he had known any Americans in Egina. "They built this," said he, pointing to the pier, the handsome granite posts of which we were passing at the moment. "They gave us bread, and meat, and clothing, when we should otherwise have perished." It was said with a look and tone that thrilled me. I felt as if the whole debt of sympathy which Greece owes our country were repaid by this one energetic expression of gratitude. We stopped opposite a small gate, and the Greek went in without cards. It was a small stone house of a story and a half, with a ricketty flight of wooden steps at the side, and not a blade of grass or sign of a flower in court or window. If there had been but a geranium in the porch, or a rosetree by the gate, for description's sake. Mr. Black was out-Mrs. Black was in. We walked up the creaking steps, with a Scotch terrier barking and snapping at our heels, and were met at the door by, really, a very pretty woman. She smiled as I apologized for our BYRON'S " MAID OF ATHENS." 131 intrusion, and a sadder or a sweeter to wish him and his family every smile I never saw. She said her happiness. A servant-girl, very welcome in a few simple words of shabbily dressed, stood at the side Italian, and I thought there were door, and we offered her some few sweeter voices in the world. money, which she might have I asked her if she had not learned taken unnoticed. She drew herEnglish yet. She coloured, and self up very coldly, and refused it, said, "No, signore!" and the deep as if she thought we had quite spot in her cheek faded gradually mistaken her. In a country where down in tints a painter would re- gifts of the kind are so univermember. Her husband, she said, sal, it spoke well for the pride of had wished to learn her language, the family, at least. I turned after and would never let her speak we had taken leave, and made an English. I began to feel a preju- | apology to speak to her again; for dice against him. Presently a boy in the interest of the general imof perhaps three years came into pression she had made upon me I the room-an ugly, white-headed, had forgotten to notice her dress, Scotch-looking little ruffian, thin- and I was not sure that I could lipped and freckled, and my aver- remember a single feature of her sion for Mr. Black became quite face. We had called unexpectedly, decided. "Did you not regret of course, and her dress was very leaving Athens ?" I asked. "Very plain. A red cloth cap, bound much, signore," she answered with about the temples with a coloured half a sigh; "but my husband dis- shawl, whose folds were mingled likes Athens." Horrid Mr. Black! with large braids of dark-brown thought I. I wished to ask her of hair, and decked with a tassel of Lord Byron, but I had heard that blue silk, which fell to her left the poet's admiration had occa- shoulder, formed her head-dress. sioned the usual scandal attendant In other respects she was dressed on every kind of pre-eminence, and like a European. She is a little her modest and timid manners, above the middle height, slight and while they assured me of her pu- well formed, and walks weakly, like rity of heart, made me afraid to most Greek women, as if her feet venture where there was even a were too small for her weight. possibility of wounding her. She Her skin is dark and clear, and sat in a drooping attitude on the she has a colour in her cheek and coarsely-covered divan, which oc- lips that looks to me consumptive. cupied three sides of the little Her teeth are white and regular, room, and it was difficult to be- her face oval, and her forehead and lieve that any eye but her hus- nose form the straight line of the band's had ever looked upon her, Grecian model-one of the few inor that the "wells of her heart' stances I have ever seen of it. Her had ever been drawn upon for any-eyes are large, and of a soft, liquid thing deeper than the simple du- hazel, and this is her chief beauty. ties of a wife and mother. She There is that "looking out of the offered us some sweetmeats, the usual Greek compliment to visitors, as we rose to go, and, laying her hand upon her heart, in the beautiful custom of the country, requested me to express her thanks to the commodore for the honour he had done her in calling, and soul through them," which Byron always described as constituting the loveliness that most moved him. I made up my mind, as we walked away, that she would be a lovely woman anywhere. Her horrid name, and the unprepossessing circumstances in which we found her, had uncharmed, I thought, all poetical delusion that would naturally surround her as the "Maid of Athens." We met her as simple Mrs. Black, whose Scotch husband's terrier had worried us at the door, and we left her, feeling that the poetry which she had called forth from the heart of Byron was her due by every law of loveliness.(N. P. Willis's Cruise in the Mediterranean.) BURNS' "CHLORIS." * her to elope with him that very night to Gretna Green, in order that they might be married, and threatened to do himself some extreme mischief if she should refuse. A hard-wrung consent to this most imprudent step fixed her fate to sorrow through life. The pair had not been united for many months, when Mr. Whelpdale was obliged by his debts to remove hastily from Barnhill, leaving his young wife no resource but that of returning to her parents at Kemmis"Lassie wi' the lint-white locks, hall. She saw her husband no Bonnie lassie, artless lassie." more for twenty-three years. Mr. Lorimer's eldest daughter The subsequent history of the Jean was at this time a very young lady is pitiful. Some years after lady, but possessed of uncommon this outpouring of poesy in her personal charms. Her form was praise, her father was unfortunate symmetry itself, and, notwithstand-in business, and ceased to be the ing hair of flaxen lightness, the beauty of her face was universally admired. A Mr. Gillespie, a brother-officer of Burns, settled at Dumfries, was already enslaved by Miss Lorimer; and to his suit the poet lent all his influence. But it was in vain. Miss Lorimer became the wife of another, under somewhat extraordinary circumstances. A young gentleman named Whelpdale, connected with the county of Cumberland, and who had already signalized himself by profuse habits, settled at Barnhill, near Moffat, as a farmer. He was acquainted with a respectable farmer named Johnston, at Drumcrieff, near Craigieburn, where Miss Lorimer visited. He thus became acquainted with the young beauty. He paid his addresses to her, and it is supposed that she was not adverse to his suit. One night, in March 1793, when the poor girl was still some months less than eighteen years of age, and of course possessed of little prudence or knowledge of the world, he took her aside, and informed her that he could no longer live except as her husband; he therefore entreated wealthy man he once was. The tuneful tongue which had sung her praise was laid in silence in Dumfries church-yard. She continued to derive no income from her husband, and scarcely even to know in what part of the world he lived. She was now, therefore, compelled to accept of a situation as plain governess in a gentleman's family; and in such situations she passed some years of her life. In 1816, returning from a visit to her brother in Sunderland, she inquired at Brampton for her husband, and learned that she had only missed seeing him by a few hours, as he had that day been in the village. He was now squandering some fourth or fifth fortune, which had been left to him by a relation. Not long after, learning that he was imprisoned for debt at Carlisle, she went to see him. Having announced to him her wish for an interview, she went to the place where he was confined, and was desired to walk in. His lodging was pointed out to her on the opposite side of a quadrangle, round which there was a covered walk, as in the ambulatories of the an |